Anonymous File Sharing a Goal to Combat RIAA

With the record industry preparing to sue its customers -- at least those who download without paying -- now comes the next step: file-sharing
services that promise to keep users anonymous.

Recording Industry Association of America officials say they can find any song swapper on services such as Kazaa and Grokster using simple tracking
software. But new services such as Earth Station 5 and eDonkey2000 say they can protect the identity of their users. And established file-sharing
services say they will adapt to protect their customers.

The RIAA's actions ''will force us to come up with solutions that will make it harder, if not impossible, to detect who the users are,'' says
Elan Oren of Imesh, a song- and game-swap firm based in Israel. ''It's the never-ending game of the firewall and the hacker.''

just a thought but wouldnt this new *anonymous file sharing* help people that traffic in child pornograthy? i mean isnt that a bad thing? i would
rather it just kept mp3 files anonymous so that you could still track mpg and jpg files.

I agree that the kiddie porn can still be pushed thru. However, if someone really wants to trade that crap, they are going to find a way to trade it,
thru anonymous file transfer or newsgroups or whatever. I think anything that can be done to combat the RIAA(read "Evil Empire") is a good course
of action.

Originally posted by ufochaser
I agree that the kiddie porn can still be pushed thru. However, if someone really wants to trade that crap, they are going to find a way to trade it,
thru anonymous file transfer or newsgroups or whatever. I think anything that can be done to combat the RIAA(read "Evil Empire") is a good course
of action.

What is Freenet? An Executive Summary
Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the
network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of
speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.
Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the
information and what its content is.

Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Unlike other
peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. Instead, files are kept or deleted
depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files in the data store are
encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content.

The network can be used in a number of different ways and isn't restricted to just sharing files like other peer-to-peer networks. It acts more like
an Internet within an Internet. For example Freenet can be used for:

Publishing websites or 'freesites'
Communicating via message boards
Playing simple turn-based games like Chess
Content distribution
Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of
censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East. Ideas and concepts pioneered in Freenet have inspired
hundreds of academic papers in the fields of computer communication, security, and law. Freenet has also received significant coverage in the
mainstream press.

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